A fourth condition worthy of attention is that, for a period which can be calculated with some degree of accuracy, products retain the form given them. Ultimately all material forms change. Vegetable and animal bodies die and decay, rocks disintegrate, the products of human labor are consumed or perish; but they offer greater or less resistance to change and disintegration, and this fact is of prime importance in all economic life. The discov ery of methods by which greater permanence can be secured when desired, is one of the great est economic services. A long step forward is taken when man substitutes for the perishable food of the savage, food which can be preserved for months, though a still more important step is taken when, through improvements of com munication, man is rendered independent of the necessity for such preservation of food, by the certainty that constant supplies will be forth coming from all quarters of the globe.
In the preceding paragraphs illustrations have already been given of the second great move ment in economic progress, viz., that gradual modification of man's surroundings, which, when it passes critical stages, may be de scribed as the creation of a new environment from the materials of the old. Man does not escape from his environment by these changes, but he renders it richer in the possibilities of goods. Industry must become adapted to the new environment as, formerly, to the old, under penalties which are greater rather than less ; but the advantages of such adaptation are also greater. Irrigation, modification of soils by the addition of essential elements of plant food, and the planting of forests, are obvious illustrations of the changes made by man in the physical aspects of nature. Changes in the character of vegetation and in the breeds of animals, brought about by conscious effort, are essentially similar.
A change of environment has sometimes been secured by a bodily migration to new regions of the earth. Under the new conditions, faculties hitherto latent are developed and, since some communication is usually retained with those left behind, the environment is virtually enlarged to include the best features of both the old and the new regions. The discovery of appliances by which new forces, as steam or electricity, may be applied to the making of goods, enlarges and improves the environment, by vastly increas ing the number and variety of goods which re sult from a given expenditure of energy. The development of the factory industries, at the opening of the present century, modified the environment of English economic activity more than it would have been modified by a diver sion of the Gulf Stream or the drying up of the Thames. The universal introduction of steel, within the past fifty years, into railway and steamship construction, into office buildings, bridges, and other public works, and the exten sion of its use in industrial and agricultural machinery, has transformed the present envi ronment beyond calculation.
These changes require corresponding changes in man's activity, and the prosperity of any community is determined chiefly by the prompt ness with which its industry is modified to suit the new possibilities of the modified environ ment. It would be too much to say that the environment is determined by the new element which rises to so great prominence, for all the previous features, both physical and social, must still be taken into account ; but the revolution resulting in the first illustration from the use of steam, and in the second from the use of steel, makes the environment essentially new and dif ferent and requires a readjustment of the en tire set of economic activities. The making of goods in one generation may demand different qualities from those of another, and the power to compete successfully in the great struggle for existence may depend upon the ability to secure the necessary readjustment promptly. A lack of such ability, whether physical, economic, or social, may mean serious diminution of welfare, or even, for special classes, entire destruction.
The initial factor in the making of goods is the possibility of utilizing the results of plant growth. The cultivation of plants may there fore be regarded as the beginning of industry. The flesh of animals used for food may be re garded merely as grain and grass in a more con venient form. Timber and cabinet wood, flax fibre, resins and rubber, perfumes, oils, and medicines from the vegetable kingdom, in so far as they are not already objects of regular culti vation like cereals, will probably become so, as industry is more highly developed. The vegeta tion of the sea yields fish, as that on the land yields bread and meat, and under cultivation might be made to yield a very considerable part of the necessary food supply.' Already the cul 1 Atwater, "The Food Supply of the Future," in Novem ber (T891) Century Magazine.
tivation of oysters in favorable coast regions has become a considerable industry, and the various fish commissions are taking measures to stock the inland rivers and lakes with suitable varieties of fish.
The extractive industries, of which the culti vation of plants is an illustration, are supple mented by the carrying and manufacturing industries. We must avoid the vulgar error of supposing that the extractive industries, such as farming and mining, are in any preeminent de gree productive. Merely because they are the first step in the process of securing control of the goods which the environment is able to pro vide, it does not follow that this is an essentially different step from those that follow. It would be no less absurd to give to the water which is engaged in disintegrating the rock of the hills preeminence over that which nature uses, in carrying the soil into the valleys and in mixing its various ingredients. The "making of goods is the name for the entire series of activities by which man secures from his surroundings the satisfaction which his nature demands.